The outside door stood open and no one was in the kitchen but Granny. The temptation to explore was irresistible.

"When the cat's away, the rats dance on the tray," the old grandmother muttered as if to herself.

"I'll just have a peep," Keith explained, turning to her for a moment. Then he made for the open door again.

The landing with its bare stone floor was familiar to him and quite barren of interest. What drew him magnetically was the tall archway leading to the mysterious upper regions known as the garret, where strange old women lived in hermit cells, and whence disturbing noises issued day and night. Even as he looked up there, he could hear a spookish grating that seemed to symbolize the spirit of the place. He shuddered a little, but not unpleasantly, for he knew what caused it.

In the brick wall ending the upward vista, he could see a square open hole with an iron shutter held open at right angles by an iron rod. As the wind shook the shutter, the rod scraped against the socket that held its hooked end. That was all--but on dark winter afternoons the effect was most disturbing.

"I'm not afraid," Keith announced, sensing his own bravery rather keenly.

"Why should you be," asked Granny.

Then he noticed the tall iron door fastened to one side of the arch in front of it. Now it was doubled up length-wise and folded back so as to leave the passage free.

"What's that for," he asked, pointing to the door.

"In case of fire," said Granny. "If it should begin to burn up there, they would close that door to keep the flames from the rest of the house."

"Would it burn much," Keith wondered.

"Your father has five cords of good birch wood stored in the top attic, so I think the whole city would see the blaze."

"And the people up there?"

"They would have to come before we closed the doors, but God have mercy on us if it ever gets that far. Remember, boy, there is nothing worse than fire so you must always be careful never play with matches."

"I know," said Keith, nodding sagely.

But he really did not know what fire meant until a few nights later. The whole family was sound asleep, Keith on the chaiselongue, his father and mother in the big bed on the other side of the room. While still half asleep he could hear his mother crying his father's name in a strangely agitated voice.

Then he woke fully and looked up. Every object in the room was clearly visible, but the light coming through the windows was not daylight. It was reddish and glaring, and the very reflection of it within the room filled the boy with vague uneasiness.

The father jumped out of bed and ran to the window.

"It is fire," he said. "Something terrible. My Lord, half the town must be burning. The whole sky is a mass of flames. And it's in the direction of the bank."

Suddenly he turned back and began to dress in wordless haste.

"Must we get out," asked the mother.

"No, it is not very close yet, but you had better get up and dress--and get everybody dressed."

By that time he was putting on his overcoat.

"Where are you going, Carl," demanded the mother, evidently more scared by his going out than by the fire.

"To the bank," answered the father, grimly.

"You mustn't, Carl! I won't let you go out! Think if anything should happen to you!"

"Nonsense," he said. "I am in no danger--but I must see what's happening to the bank, and help if things have to be taken out."

"Carl, Carl...." was all the mother could get over her lips.

"Don't worry, Ann," he pleaded, bending over her for a minute, and his voice took on a tenderness Keith seemed never to have heard before. "I shall be careful, but I must go. If the fire should come this way, I'll be back in time to help you all out."

She tried to cling to him, but he freed himself with gentle firmness. In a minute more he was gone, and in the next second Keith's mother was at the window looking out, though she had only her night-linen on and it was late autumn. Unobserved and unrebuked, Keith joined her, and when he looked up at the sky, his heart almost stopped beating.

A ghastly stillness reigned outside--except when it was merely accentuated by the occasional sound of hurried steps along the street at the top of the lane. Finally some one was heard passing through the lane itself.

"Please," Keith's mother cried at the top of her voice. "What is it?"

"It's the German Church," a voice responded from below. "The whole spire is flaming like a torch."

"Are we in danger down here?"

"Hard to tell. It depends on which way the spire falls. If it falls outward, I fear the whole city will go."

Then he walked off.

By that time the servant girl had come in weeping as if she had just heard her death-doom announced, and from the Granny was calling to them:

"You'll freeze to death, all of you, if you don't put on some clothes."

So they dressed, though difficulty, and then there was nothing to do but to wait. The mother was at the window all the time, every few minutes she said to the boy:

"Oh, I hope nothing happens to your father!"

At first it scared him more than did the light. But after a while it began to have an opposite effect. He seemed to grow stiff and hard. The excitement of the fire was still there, but it was overlaid and almost neutralized by a vast impatience that seemed to take possession of his whole being. He felt that if his mother made the same remark once more, he should yell with rage and agony, and to save himself, he joined Granny in the kitchen, where the girl had started a fire in order to make some coffee.

The sky in that quarter was just as bright as in front, and no light was needed in the room.

Suddenly he heard his mother cry out:

"Oh."

At the same time the brightness seemed to increase to something more than daylight.

A quick change took place in the boy's heart. He ran into the living-room and put his arm about his mother who was still lying in the window.

"Don't worry, mamma," he whispered to her. "I'll take care of you."

There was something in his voice that brought the mother to herself. She closed the window and took him in her arms and kissed him as she had never kissed him before, he thought.

"It was the spire that fell just now," she said, "and if there is any danger, your father will be here in a minute."

Almost as she spoke, the glare outside began to die down, though the sky remained red and threatening until daybreak.

Then they had coffee, Keith being allowed an extra dose in his milk. And soon afterwards the father returned to tell the story of the fire and inform them that all danger was over as far as they were concerned.

For days afterwards the experiences of that night occupied Keith's mind. The joy of excitement was probably uppermost in spite of all other considerations, Beneath it was a vivid conception of the horrors of fire that remained a live thing in his mind until he was well on in years, sometimes waking him out of his sleep at night and setting his heart palpitating wildly at the mere idea of danger. Lastly, however, there was left from that momentous night a new attitude toward the mother that implied a direct criticism--the first one that had ever broken into clear consciousness. It did not make him love her less, but it changed the character of his love in some subtle way. The father, on the other hand, had gained by that night. There was something heroic about the quiet way in which he walked off to take care of the bank, pushing all other considerations aside until that duty had been filled.

Gradually Keith learned to know the old house from top to bottom. The garret and the cellar remained of excitement for a long time. The rest of it offered little to hold the attention or feed the imagination.

It covered three sides of a rectangle, with the courtyard in the centre. The wall of the adjoining house; formed the fourth side--a sheer cliff of plastered brick that towered two whole stories higher, its dreary expanse unbroken by a single window. Along the foot of it ran a long low structure with innumerable doors opening on the courtyard. Thither men, women and children had to descend regardless of weather or hour or season, and every visitor could be watched from the windows opening on the yard.

The rear part of the house constituted practically a building by itself, with a stairway of its own, and the people living there seemed to form a world apart, with which Keith never became very well acquainted. But on the ground-floor of that part was the laundry, used in turn by every household in the entire house and regarded by the boy as a far-off, adventurous place until he had been allowed to visit it a couple of times.

The building facing the lane and that running along the courtyard had a stairway in common at the corner where they joined. Its stairs and landings were of stone, uncarpeted, and lighted in the day by a window on each floor and at night by a single gas jet on each landing. At the foot of the lowermost flight of stairs was a long and dark passage that turned at a right angle and finally reached the lane after what seemed a long walk. Branching to the right, at the foot of the stairs, was another passage from which the cellar was reached after you had used all your strength to push open a huge iron door that squeaked uncannily on its stiff hinges.

The flats on the second and third floors ran straight through from the lane to the rear building, but on the fourth floor, where Keith lived, another family occupied the rooms looking upon the courtyard. And there lived Jonas, the only other child in the house during Keith's earliest years.

Jonas' father was a compositor--a tall, lank, hollow-eyed man with a bad cough. His mother was a woman of the people, angular and taciturn. Jonas himself was pale and gawky and shy.

Those two families, living within a few feet of each other and meeting daily on the common landing, had little more intercourse than if they had been parted by miles of desert. The reserved and slightly eccentric character of the neighbours had something to do with this separation, but social distinctions counted for more. A compositor was, after all, a mere workman, and Keith felt instinctively that his mother looked with kindly contempt at the more primitive ways of the adjoining household. Now and then he was permitted to go and play for a little while with Jonas, who was a year older, but the other boy hardly ever entered Keith's home. Nor was their playing much of a success. Jonas was slow-witted and reserved, while alertness and frankness were among Keith's most characteristic traits. But differences of temperament accounted only in part for their failure to come together. Keith felt as if a wall of some kind stood between them, and as if the eyes watching from the other side of that wall were distinctly hostile at times. It exasperated him as if it had implied terrible injustice, but it was only in moments of extreme boredom he really cared. At such moments he would also develop a passionate desire for a brother or sister. He might have wished for a dog or a cat even, but the idea of such a disturbing element in his parental home seemed too preposterous for serious contemplation. In fact, so foreign was that idea to the home atmosphere, that Keith went through the rest of his life envying other people's pets without ever giving earnest thought to the acquisition of one for himself.

Just as the parental attitude toward the nearest neighbours suggested a kindly but unsentimental tolerance of inferiors, so it became unmistakably tinged with a slightly jealous but unprotesting submission to superiors whenever the lower floors were reached. A bachelor official of some kind lived on the floor immediately below, with no one but his housekeeper to share his spacious apartment. As deputy landlord, Keith's father had to see this tenant like all the rest, but of social intercourse there was none, while on the other hand, Keith's mother kept up a gossiping acquaintance with the housekeeper. As far as Keith himself was concerned, there was nothing more awe-inspiring than a chance meeting on the stairs with the monocle, side-whiskers, precise manners and doled-out civility of Mr. Bureau-Chief Broström. The distance was so immense that even aspirations were precluded on the part of the boy. He could imagine being king, but not a duly appointed government official with a salary enabling him to occupy half a dozen rooms practically by himself.

Of course, there were rumours afloat about a more intimate relationship between the bureau chief and his fairly good-looking housekeeper, who nominally had for her own that part of the flat which faced the courtyard, and these rumours did not escape the boy's keen ears. While their true inwardness was incomprehensible to him, they made him look wonderingly at the housekeeper whenever he met her, and when he accepted her gingersnaps and other tempting delicacies, he did so with a sense of wickedness that limited his gratefulness.

A retired dry goods dealer and his good-hearted old wife lived on the second floor. The Fernbloms were the aristocracy of the house in the lane, having the best rooms, paying the highest rent and giving the biggest parties, but even Keith guessed quite early that they were simple souls, risen by thrift from very humble origins. They had a single daughter, a girl of delicate health and looks with whom Keith probably would have fallen in love hopelessly if she had stayed in the house. But she married early, moved to some other city and was rarely seen in her old home. Reports of her progress were received, of course, and passed on in the hearing of Keith, but like so many other things not touching his own life closely, it carried no real meaning to his mind. The parties continued, and Keith's parents were often invited, partly because the old couple was too simple-minded to think of social distinctions, and partly because they both came from the same district as Keith's Granny. Keith would be allowed to come along at times, and he liked the idea of going and the good food, but otherwise he found it dull business watching a lot of grown-up people seated solemnly about square tables playing cards. Then, one day, the old lady died, and Keith attended a part of the funeral, and from the window he saw the coffin taken away in a hearse buried in flowers. It made him ask many questions of his mother, but none of her answers brought death any closer to his mind. After all, the old lady had been nothing to him, and if the parties should cease as he heard was likely, the loss did not seem great to him. The only thing that made a real difference to him was his discovery that there would be no more of those ball-shaped gingersnaps that the old lady used to bake herself and keep in an earthen jar almost as tall as Keith.

The front part of the ground floor was used as an office of some kind in those early days, but the middle part facing the long row of outhouses was a human habitation. The rooms were so dark that a lamp had to be used most of the day, and the principal entrance was direct from the courtyard. An old workman and his wife lived there until the office in front was changed into a coffee-house and those rooms toward the courtyard became the kitchen. When it happened, some one told Keith's mother a story which she in her turn conveyed to the boy.

History repeated itself, she said, and Keith already knew that history was something that had happened before he was born. One hundred years ago, when Gustavus III was king of Sweden and things were more exciting than in these later days of outward and inward peace, there used also to be a coffee-house on the ground floor, and a widely known one at that. It occupied the floor above too, but this floor was in reality used as a club, and the club was political and the men who frequented it were conspiring against the government. This the police knew, and every so often a lot of armed and uniformed men would surround the house and make prisoners of those caught in the clubrooms on the second floor. But as a rule no one was found there but a couple of sleepy and grouchy attendants who cursed their luck at having to spend their lives in such a dull place.

"But," Keith interrupted when the story got that far "you just told me that the rooms had a lot of conspirators in them."

"So they had."

"And yet they were empty when the police came there? Do you really mean that the people could make themselves invisible?"

"That's where the real story comes in," his mother explained. "You know there is a long passageway between the front rooms of the Fernbloms and their kitchen in the rear. It runs back of the stairs. The next time you go through it, stamp your foot very hard, and you will hear that it sounds hollow in one place. At that spot there used to be a trap door in the floor. Now it is nailed down hard, but in the old days it could be opened any time, and then you found a stairway below. It led into our part of the cellar, where you still can find a couple of stone steps at one end. Then the conspirators went down into the main cellar, and at the back of it there was a tunnel leading under the rear part of the house and the lane beyond to a house on the other side. That's the way they escaped, and that's why the police never found anybody in the club."

"What did the conspirators want," asked Keith after he had pondered the matter for a while.

"I don't know exactly," his mother admitted, "but the king was killed by one of them at last."

"I wish I had been there to defend the king," said Keith. Then a new thought seized him suddenly: "I want to go down and see those steps."

"All right," his mother answered to his astonishment and joy. "Lena will soon go down to get potatoes for dinner, and then you can go along, if you only promise to come right up again."

Shortly afterwards the momentous expedition actually took place. Keith had been as far as the outer cellar door before, but he had never cared to go further. When you opened that door, you were met by an air so cold and damp that it struck your face like a wet sheet, and the stairs fell away into a black abyss that seemed bottomless.

The door was of iron, rounded at the top to fit the arch, and covered with rust. It looked as if it had been in its place since the house was built, and Keith had heard that the house could not be less than two hundred years old. The key, which Keith had been permitted to carry going down, was of iron too, and nearly twice as long as Keith's hand. The lock was in keeping with the key, enormous in size and so stiff that Lena had to use both hands to turn the key.

Having laid a firm hold of Lena's skirt, Keith followed her several steps down until they reached a place in the opposite wall where a single very tall step led up to another iron door, square-cut and narrow, back of which lay the cellar used by the Wellanders. Lena lighted a candle that burned with difficulty in the clammy air.

Inside nothing could be seen at first but a number of boxes and barrels full of supplies, and back of them walls built out of enormous stone blocks and dripping with moisture. As his eyes became accustomed to the dim light, however, Keith perceived that the end toward the lane was closed by a wall which even his inexperienced glance recognized as brick and comparatively new. Squeezing between two large barrels of potatoes he saw two stone steps at the foot of that wall and managed actually to put his foot on one of them.

"I wish I knew what's back of that wall," he remarked at last.

"Oh, nothing," said Lena indifferently.

"There might be skeletons," he ventured after a pause.

"Jesus Christ, child," Lena almost screamed, looking as if she had caught sight of a ghost. "Where in the world does he get such notions from? Come out of here now. I think the master will have to go down for potatoes himself hereafter."

"There was a skeleton in the story you told me the other night," Keith protested with dignity, but not unaffected by the girl's unmistakable fright.

"This is no place for stories of that kind," she declared pulling him away from the barrels and almost forgetting to close the cellar door behind her.

That evening Keith kept thinking of the story and the steps in the cellar. He was sorry not to be able to walk up those stairs. And there must be some old things left lying about on them. Then he imagined himself a conspirator, hearing the police beating at the doors and making his way through the stairway and the tunnel to some quiet, unobserved doorway in another lane, much narrower and darker than their own. It was exciting, the passage through the tunnel, which he could see with his mind's eye--but the part of conspirator did not appeal to him. He had seen policemen on the street several times. They were very tall and carried sabres. Some time when he was conspiring they might be too quick for him and get him before he could reach the secret stairway. It would be much better, he decided finally, to be able to look them in the face and say truthfully:

"I have done nothing at all!"

The regular meals of the day were four, not counting "afternoon coffee" which was regarded as a special treat and always subject to negotiations, though forthcoming as unfailingly as dinner or supper. It was the natural and nominal counterpart of the "morning coffee," which served to initiate the day's feeding. This first meal was consumed separately, as each person was ready for work, and on the whole its name was appropriate, although plenty of bread went with the coffee. Keith's turn came generally a little after seven, when he sat down to a large cup or bowl of half coffee and half milk into which had been broken a good sized piece of hard Swedish rye-bread. A little sugar was allowed, but no butter. This regimen began when Keith was less than three years old, and he enjoyed it immensely, provided the bread had steeped long enough to become soft, When, at last, he turned to rolls and butter dipped into the coffee, it did not mean that his taste had changed, but merely that his increasing sense of manhood found the earlier dish too childish.

Breakfast was due about ll:30 and consisted generally of sundry left-overs from the preceding day, bread and butter forming one of the principal ingredients. Then came the main meal of the day, dinner, between 3:30 and 4 in the afternoon. As a rule it had only two courses: some meat dish or fish with potatoes, and a soup served last. Now and then there was a vegetable. Desserts were reserved for special occasions. To Keith each such meal was inseparably connected with the parental admonition: "Eat plenty of bread with your meat, child." The bread was of the hard kind already referred to--thin round cakes that one broke to pieces and that gave the teeth plenty of work. Various superstitions were invoked to promote the consumption of it. Thus the failure to finish a piece already broken off was alleged to result in the transfer of all one's strength to the actual consumer of the piece left behind. Keith was a docile child in spite of his impulsiveness and he did he was told and believed what he heard, but he often wondered why the rules so strictly enforced himself did not apply to his parents.

"Afternoon coffee," generally accompanied by some form of sweet bread or cake, "happened" about 5:30, and at 8 supper was served. The final meal was commonly made up of sandwiches with porridge and milk, or perhaps, when fate was remarkably propitious, thin pancakes with cranberry jam. There might be an extra snack of food at a still later hour in case of unexpected callers, but such visits were not frequent and Keith would be asleep by that time anyhow.

It was different when parties were given to formally invited company. Then Keith had to stay up--or pretend to do so--as long as the guests remained, and he must have a share of whatever the house had to offer. To such occasions he looked forward with feverish joy, not so much on account of the good things dispensed as for the sake of feeling the ordinary strict rules relaxed. Apart from Christmas, the principal celebrations took place on his parents' birthdays and "namedays." Every day in the Swedish calendar carries a name, and all those bearing it have a right to expect felicitations and presents from their relations and more intimate friends. In return they are expected to celebrate the occasion with a party that gives an excuse for showing what the house can do in the way of hospitality. The same thing applies to the birthday anniversaries, only in a higher degree. Not to celebrate one's birthday can only be a sign of poverty, miserliness or misanthropy, and to overlook the birthday anniversary of a close relative is to risk an immediate breach of connections.

Nothing was more familiar to Keith than his mother's open worries about money and his father's occasional stern reference to the need of saving. To the boy those complaints and warnings meant merely that the parents were in a depressed and unfaourable mood, tending to draw the usual constraint a little tighter about him. He was intensely sensitive to atmosphere, and too often that of his home had the same effect on his young soul as the low-hanging, leaden skies of a Swedish December day before the first snow has fallen. It made him long for sunlight, and the parties brought it to some extent. Then care and caution were forgotten, although his father might grumble before and after. Then the daily routine was broken, and Granny became cynically but actively interested, bent above all on seeing that "the house would not be shamed."

When the great day came, the home, always scrupulously neat, shone with cleanliness. Every one worked up to the last minute. Cupboards and pantries were full of unfamiliar and enticing supplies. The dining table, opened to its utmost length, groaned under the burden of innumerable cold dishes of tempting appearance, while from the kitchen came the odours of more substantial courses still in the making. A one end of Granny's bureau stood a battery of multicoloured bottles. The other end was jammed with desserts and goodies meant to be served while the guests were waiting for supper or during the card game that generally followed it. Better than anything else, however, was the father's loud laugh and eager talk, so rarely heard in the course of their regular daily existence. Even then he might be displeased by some slight slip of the boy's, and a sharp rebuke might follow, but it seemed forgotten as soon as uttered, and of other consequences there were none to be feared. Therefore, Keith wished that there might be a party every day, and while there was one going on he sometimes caught himself wondering whether, after all, he did not like his father as much as his mother, or more.

From his own experiences with food as well as from his parents' attitude toward it, both on special and on ordinary occasions, Keith distilled a sort of philosophy that it took him several decades to outlive. To him eating became a good thing in itself, rather than a means to an end. His parents were neither gluttons nor gourmets, but they liked good food, and, what was of still greater importance, good eating represented the principal source of enjoyment open to them. The same seemed true of their friends, and when company arrived no topic was more in favour than a comparison of past culinary enjoyments. Keith's father, for instance, never grew tired of telling about the time when he was still the chief clerk in a fashionable grocery and the owner gave him permission to dispose freely of a keg of Holland oysters that threatened to "go bad" before they could be sold. Four or five friends were drummed together. The feast took place at night in the store itself. Bread, butter, salt, pepper, liquor, beer and cards were the only things added to the oysters.

"And when morning came, and I had to open the store, there was nothing left but a keg full of empty shells," the father used to shout, laughing at the same time so that it was hard to catch what he said. Then he would smack his lips and add with earnest conviction: "I have never tasted anything better unless it be the Russian caviar we used to import for the Court."

Always it was a matter of quantity as well as quality. A feast was not a feast without more than plenty. Eating was always in order. An offer of a dish was as good as a command to partake. A refusal bordered on the offensive. Pressing a reluctant guest was the highest form of hospitality. Dietary precautions were apparently unheard of except in the case of certain chronic ailments, and then they were accepted as one of life's worst evils. To eat well was to be well, and the natural conclusion was that the best cure in case of trouble was to eat. Lack of appetite was a misfortune as well as a dangerous symptom, and to eat when not hungry was not only a necessity but a virtue.

Yet Keith longed for other things and he learned early that even eating has its drawbacks.

Except on Sundays, the father rarely ate with the rest of the family. He left in the morning before Keith was up and never came home for breakfast. His dinner often had to wait until five or six or even later, so he seldom cared to eat again when the others had their supper.

One afternoon, however, he appeared just as Keith and his mother were to sit for dinner. It put her in a flutter and she couldn't get an additional cover laid quick enough.

"I heard that mother was coming," he remarked as he seated himself at the table.

Instantly Keith's mother shot an apprehensive glance at the boy and exclaimed:

"Please try to be a real nice boy now, so that your grandmother does not get a bad impression of you." Then she added, turning to her husband: "She never says anything, but she always looks as if I spoiled Keith hopelessly."

"Well," the father rejoined thoughtfully, "she brought up four children of her own without anybody else to help her, and there was not one among us who dared to disregard her slightest word."

"How about Henrik," the mother suggested a little tartly.

"Yes, the one spared is the one spoiled," admitted the father with a sigh. "He was the youngest, and while he was licked like all of us, her hand never seemed quite as firm with him as with the rest. The worst thing parents can do to children is to let them have their own will."

Keith was listening with one ear only. His thoughts were on Uncle Henrik, who would put in an unheralded appearance now and then, always when the father was away and always to the consternation of the whole household. Although hustled out of the kitchen as soon as the unbidden visitor arrived, Keith had had a good look at him several times and had also overheard the parents discussing him. He was still comparatively young. Yet he looked like animated waste matter. His face seemed to hang on him. His mouth was loose and void of expression. His eyes were bleared and ever on the move. He spoke mostly in a toneless drawl, that sometimes turned into a shrill whine, but also at rare intervals could change into a soft, heart-winning purr. His clothing was poorer and coarser than that of any other person seen by Keith. Once or twice it seemed to the boy like a repulsive uniform, and he heard his parents speak with mingled disgust and relief of some house or institution that was never fully named.

"No one has a better heart than Henrik," Keith heard his father say once, "but he has no more spine than a cucumber, and he can't keep away from drink."

Then the food was brought in, and Uncle Henrik was forgotten. As usual, there was a meat course to begin with, and Keith ate what for him was a big portion. Nor did he get into any trouble beyond having an extra large piece of hard bread put beside his plate by the father and finding the disposal of it rather difficult.

The meat was followed by a large bowl of soup, and the very sight of it made Keith look unhappy--a fact that did not escape his father.

Keith cared little for soups, while both parents liked them, and he had a particular dislike of soups made on a meat stock, like the one just brought in. For some reason that Keith might have thought funny under other circumstances, it was called Carpenter Soup, and it contained a lot of rather coarse vegetables. Among these were green celery and parsnips, both of which filled the boy with an almost morbid disgust.

While the mother was serving and Keith was waiting in dumb agony, it flashed through his mind that Uncle Granstedt might be eating that kind of soup. If so, the boy thought, he would rather let himself be killed than made a carpenter.

As the turn came to his own plate, Keith tried to catch his mother's eye with a signalled appeal to put in as little as possible, but she was talking to her husband and not noticing the boy at all. And so, at last, he found himself confronted with a plate filled to the brim.

The first few spoonfuls went down without much resistance, chiefly because he confined himself to the fluid part of the soup. Then it seemed of a sudden as if one more mouthful would choke him, and his eating became a mere dallying with his spoon.

"Go on and finish your soup," the father urged sternly.

"I can't."

"Why?"

"I have eaten all I can."

"That does not matter," rejoined his father. "One must always finish what is on one's plate."

"But I don't like it," Keith blurted out in a moment of desperation--which was unfortunate.

"Children have no likings of their own," said the father, putting down his spoon. "They must like what their parents give them. And you will finish that soup--if I have to feed you myself to make you do it."

Two more spoonfuls went down by an heroic effort. Then Keith burst into tears, and his father's face grew still darker as he asked scornfully:

"Are you a boy or a girl?"

Keith did not care at that moment. In fact, he thought that if girls had a right to cry, he would rather be one.

His mother was trying to coax him with kind words, and he actually raised the filled spoon to his lips once more, but the sensation within him was such that he let it drop again with a splash. That was the crowning offence, and the feeding process began at once. His father took him by the neck with one hand and administered the spoon with the other. It was done firmly and perhaps harshly, but in such a manner that the boy was not hurt.

Keith cried and coughed and swallowed--and in the midst of that ordeal he noticed the wonderful softness of his father's hands. But his heart was full of bitter resentment, and he wished that he could grow up on the spot.

What the end might have been is hard to tell, had not a slight commotion been heard from the kitchen at that juncture.

"There is mother now," said the father, letting go his hold on Keith's neck. "Wipe your eyes and try to act like a boy. Some day we'll put you into skirts."

Keith did not care. He knew now that he would not have to eat the rest of the soup. That was the one thing in the world that seemed to matter to him. His tears ceased. But now his body was shaken by a convulsive sob. On the whole his mood was one of hopeless resignation.

"I am glad to see you, mother," said Keith's father, rising quickly as a little old woman appeared in the kitchen doorway. His tone surprised the boy. There was warmth in it, but still more of reverence bordering on awe, and also something of pride. Thus might a queen be greeted, but only by those nearest and dearest to her. What struck the boy most of all, however, was the world of difference lying between that tone and the one in which the father addressed his wife even in moments of closest understanding. It gave Keith his first clear glimpse of the distinction between love and respect, between sympathy and trust.

"So you are home, Carl," the grandmother remarked in her usual quiet, matter-of-fact manner. Then she turned to her daughter-in-law, who had also risen to her feet: "Is your head as bad as usual, Anna?"

"Thank you," answered Keith's mother, and the boy could sense that she was not at her ease although she smiled pleasantly. "Those new powders I got from Dr. Sköld helped a great deal."

"Hm," grunted the older woman as she walked across the room and sat down on a chair not far from Keith. "I had no time or money to bother with powders at your age, but times have changed."

She was taking in every detail of the room as she spoke, without looking pointedly at anything in particular. Suddenly Keith, who followed her every movement as if hypnotized, was startled by meeting the hard gaze of her calm, pale-blue eyes. Those eyes illuminated her small, wrinkled face so completely that the boy saw nothing else. Gone were her trimmed wig, her black shawl, her wide skirt of a checkered grey. Gone were even her thin, tight lips that used to close with the firm grip of a vice. Nothing was left but the eyes that looked him through and through until it was impossible for him to stand still any longer.

"What is the matter with Keith," she asked. "Sick, too?"

"No, thank heaven," the mother blurted out. "We have nothing to complain of his health--"

"No," the father broke in with a suggestion of grim humour, "not about his health, but--"

"Of course," the old lady said with a nod of comprehension. "I don't wish to criticize anybody or anything, but I don't think Keith is very obedient. He wants to pick and choose, I suppose, as if the food were not good enough for him."

"Well, he can't," the father rejoined.

"Children should eat anything and be glad to get it at that. Mine never thought of refusing what I gave them. If they ever had...."

She didn't finish the sentence, but it made Keith feel that he would never have dared one word of protest about the soup if the grandmother had been there a little earlier. Yet she spoke without marked feeling, without hardness, almost kindly. It was plain as she went on, that she believed intensely in what she said, and that it touched the very foundations of existence as she saw it:

"Children owe everything to their parents, and the least they can do in return is to accept thankfully what they get. That is what I did in my childhood, and I never dreamt of anything else. I had no will but that of my parents, and I knew that I could not and should not have any will of my own."

Everybody but the grandmother was still standing. The mother's face bore clear evidence of conflicting tendencies to accept and reject. Looking at her, Keith felt, as he often did, that there was something within her that gave his view of matters a fighting chance. The father, on the other hand, seemed of a sudden to have become a child himself, listening obediently and with absorbed approval. It looked almost as if he were still afraid of that white-haired, fragile, tight-lipped little woman, and the sight of him filled Keith with a vague uneasiness.

"Please sit down," said the grandmother at last. "I did not mean to disturb you, and Keith looks as if he might fall in a heap any moment."

"Why don't you stand up straight, Keith," asked his mother. "You will never grow up unless you do, and your grandmother will think worse of you than she already does."

"I am not blaming the child," the old lady began in the same passive, quietly assured tone. But before she got further, the father broke in:

"I think Keith had better go and play in his own corner--and please keep quiet, for grandmother and I have important things to talk of."

Keith retired as directed, and at that moment growing up seemed to him a more unreal and impossible thing than ever.

Not long afterwards the grandmother left, both parents escorting her to the outside door. When they returned to the living-room, Keith heard his mother say:

"I don't see why she should always find fault with Keith. He's not a bit worse than Brita's Carl, whom she is helping to spoil just as fast as she can."

"Well, that's her way," replied the father, paying no attention to the latter part of the remark. "She was brought up that way herself, and that's the way she brought up the four of us."

He was evidently in high good-humour and did what Keith had never seen him do before when no company was present. He got out a cigar from one of the little drawers in the upper part of mamma's bureau and sat down at the still covered dining table to smoke it. This made Keith feel almost as if they were having a party, and soon he sneaked out of his corner and joined the parents at the table. First he stood hesitatingly beside his mother, but little by little he edged over to the father until he actually was leaning against the latter's knee without being rebuffed. The father even put his hand on Keith's head, and the soup episode became very distant and dim.

"She used to lick us mercilessly," the father said as if speaking chiefly to himself, and as he spoke there was a reminiscent smile on his face and not a trace of resentment in his voice. "But she was absolutely just about it--so just that she used to lick all four of us whenever one had earned it. That was to keep the rest from thinking themselves any better, she said, and also because she felt sure that all of us had deserved it, although she had not happened to find it out."

"I think it hard and unjust," Keith's mother protested. "And I don't believe in beating children all the time."

"Those were hard days," the father mused on, "and everybody did it, and children seemed to know their place better then. I don't think we suffered very much from the beatings we got, they certainly did not make us think less of mother. She had her hands full, too, and not much time to think of nice distinctions. We were all small when father died, and Henrik was just a baby. There was no one but her to look after us, and how she did it, God only knows. But I have never heard her speak one word of complaint, and she always managed. Sometimes there was little enough, and we were mighty glad to get what there was, as she told you herself, but she always had something for us. Then we had to go to work just as soon as we could. I was thirteen when I began to add my share to the common heap."

"Did you go to school," Keith ventured, having recently overheard some talk of his parents that seemed to bear on his own immediate future.

"I did," the father replied, "but not long. I wanted to study, and my teacher was so anxious that I should go on that he promised to get me free admission to the higher school. But mother wouldn't listen. And I suppose it was not to be."

"Did you like school," asked Keith, not having the slightest idea of what a school might be like.

"Yes, I liked all about it but one thing. There was a big boy who bullied all the rest, and no one cared to fight him. He went for me the very first day of the term, and when I fought back, he gave me such a licking that I could hardly walk into the schoolroom afterwards. The next day he asked if I had had enough, and I told him I meant to go on till he had enough. So we started right in again, and he licked me worse than the day before. But I just couldn't give in. For three whole months we fought every day, and each day I made it harder for him. And one day I got the upper hand of him at last, and gave it to him until he began to cry and begged for mercy. Then I let him go, but no sooner had I turned my back on him, than he picked up a small sapling that was lying around and struck me over the head with it. There was a piece of root standing straight out, and it hit me right on top of my head so that the blood squirted out and I fainted on the spot. Then he had to leave school, and the last thing I heard of him was that the police had got him for something still worse."

"Oh, Carl," the mother cried with a shudder, "you should have complained to the teacher!"

"The teacher was watching us all the time, although I didn't know it. He told me afterwards that he would have helped me any time I asked, but that he would have thought less of me for asking."

Keith stared hard at his father and tried to imagine himself doing the same thing, but his fancy did not seem to work well in that direction. Later, when he was in bed, the father's story came back to him. Somehow it made him feel very proud, but also uneasy. He felt that there nothing more wonderful than to fight some one stronger than oneself and win, and soon he was busy slaying giants and dragons and bears and other monsters that he had heard Granny tell about. But he tried to think of himself as fighting a real boy in the way as his father, his dreams seemed to peter out ignominiously.

Then his mother came to in to tuck him in and make him say his prayers and kiss him good-night. Suddenly he flung his arms about her neck in a passion of craving for tenderness and protection. Putting his mouth close to her ear, he whispered a question that had nothing to do with the father's story or his fancies of a few moments ago.

"Why must I eat things I don't want?"